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vatbook - Ruby API

Another gem release: vatbook is Ruby API to the Vatbook service for reading and parsing Vatsim pilot and ATC bookings. Booking query requests are made by FIR and individual bookings are returned as objects, exposing a rich set of attributes. Supports excluding enroute pilot bookings. Supports pulling pilot and atc bookings separately or as a combined hash.

Usage

This gem provides one public method: vatbook, which can be applied to any string (or variable containing a string) representing a full or partial FIR ICAO code.

For example if you want to retrieve all active stations (ATC positions and pilots) for Bosnia-Herzegovina FIR (ICAO: LQSB), then you can use:

# Attaching the method directly to a string:
"LQSB".vatbook

# Attaching the method to a variable containing a string:
fir = "LQSB"
fir.vatbook

Anatomy of method returns

The vatbook method returns a hash of 2 elements: 1) the matching atc bookings, 2) all matching pilots bookings. Each of those is an array, cosnsisting of station objects. Each of these objects includes a number of attributes:

fir.vatbook # => {:atc => [a1, a2, a3 ...], :pilots => [p1, p2, p3, p4 ...]}

fir.vatbook[:atc] #=> [a1, a2, a3 ...]
fir.vatbook[:pilots] #=> [p1, p2, p3 ...]

fir.vatbook[:atc].first #=> a1
fir.vatbook[:pilots].first #=> p1

a1.callsign #=> "LQSA_APP"
a1.name #=> "Svilen Vassilev"
a1.cid #=> "1175035"
a1.start #=> "2012-10-08 08:00:00"
a1.end #=> "2012-10-08 10:00:00"

...

p1.callsign #=> "ACH217S"
p1.name #=> "Dragomir Andonovic"
p1.cid #=> "931960"
p1.dep #=> "LQSA"
p1.arr #=> "LDSP"
p1.route #=> "VRANA L5 KENEM"
p1.aircraft #=> "AT72"
...

Station attributes

Here's a complete list of the station object attributes that can be accessed:

Common attributes for atc and pilots:

  • cid (VATSIM ID)
  • callsign
  • name
  • role (atc or pilot)
  • fir (the FIR ICAO used in the request)
  • start (planned start time)
  • end (planned end time)

Pilot specific attributes

  • dep (planned departure airport)
  • arr (planned destination airport)
  • route (planned route)
  • aircraft (planned aircraft type)
  • enroute (boolean, whether or not the flight is enroute for the FIR)

Customizing the request

The vatbook method can be customized by passing in a hash-style collection of arguments. The currently supported arguments and their defaults are:

:enroute => true     # Possible values: true, false. Default: true

The :enroute => false option can be used to exclude all booked flights that
are enroute for the selected FIR, i.e. don't originate or end on one of the FIR's
airports. Example:

# Lets exclude all enroute pilot bookings for LQSB FIR and only display bookings
# that are outbound/inbound one of Bosnia-Herzegovina airports:

"LQSB".vatbook(:enroute => false) #=> [pilot1, pilot2, pilot3...]

Download links

As usual the compiled gem is available via rubygems and the source code and documentation are on github.

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